Southeast Asia

03/11/2013

A
demonstrator burns a cross during a protest in the Badami Bagh area of
Lahore March 9. An enraged mob torched dozens of houses located in
a Christian-dominated neighbourhood of Lahore on Saturday, local media
reported. (Adrees Hassain/Reuters)

A barbed exchange over a haircut turned into accusations
of blasphemy and the torching of a neighbourhood.

Pakistan is once more reeling in the wake of sectarian
violence after more than 125 homes in Lahore were burned by a mob of more than
3,000 people on Saturday.

The crowd was responding to rumours that a local Christian
man named Sawan Masih had made derogatory comments about the Prophet Muhammad.
Masih, a 26-year-old sanitation worker, told police after his arrest on
blasphemy charges that a local barber had spread the false rumours after
refusing to cut his hair.

A church and several shops were also burned over the weekend
by the mob, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reports.

The area of Lahore targeted by the mob is made up largely of
Christian families. Most of them had left the area because police
warned them about the possible attack.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime
Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf have ordered an immediate inquiry into the attacks.

The Express Tribune newspaper reports
21 suspects have been jailed for their alleged involvement in the attack.

It’s understandable if locals don’t expect
to receive justice for their burned homes. Pakistan’s policing has long been
criticized for its inefficiency. In 2011, I investigated Pakistan’s broken
justice system, where 98 per cent of those charged of a serious crime are acquitted,
for a Star investigation.

The Lahore mob’s rampage also rekindles
memories of the case of Asia Bibi.

Bibi, a Christian mother of five, is
jailed in Pakistan, condemned to death on the charge of blasphemy. When
moderate Punjab governor Salman Taseer sought to have her sentence quashed, he
was murdered by his own security guard.

Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at The Star. He was The Star's South Asia bureau chief from 2008 to 2011. He now covers humanitarian aid and international assistance. Follow him on Twitter @rwesthead

"Singh
was not alone in the cell when he committed suicide. Other inmates were present
and a guard was also posted. But nobody came to know about it. Around 5 a.m. he
was found hanging," a source told the paper.

But Singh's family and lawyer said he was murdered because his right hand was deformed and so
he could not have killed himself.

Singh’s
lawyer VK Anand: "There were no circumstances which could have led to Ram
Singh committing suicide. There was no mental stress. He was very happy."

Either
way the BBC's Soutik Biswas said the death is embarrassing for the Indian
authorities.

"The
death in prison of a man accused in the gang rape and murder of a student in
Delhi has raised questions about security in South Asia's largest prison,” he said.

Home
minister Sushilkumar Shinde told a press conference in the capital: "It is
a major lapse in security, certainly it is not a small incident. Action will be
taken. I cannot come to the conclusion at this moment whether it is a suicide
or not before an inquiry."

Hamida Ghafour is
a foreign affairs reporter at The Star. She has lived and worked in the Middle
East and Asia for more than 10 years and is the author of a book on
Afghanistan. Follow her on Twitter @HamidaGhafour

03/06/2013

A Bihari Hindu
priest, smeared with coloured powder, looks on after the completion of a ritual
at the Sangam, the confluence of the rivers Ganges, Yamuna and mythical
Saraswati during the Maha Kumbh festival in Allahabad on March 6. The
Kumbh Mela in the town of Allahabad will see up to 100 million worshippers
gather over 55 days to take a ritual bath in the holy waters, believed to
cleanse sins and bestow blessings. (Sanjay Kanojia/AFP/Getty Images)

03/03/2013

Indian onlookers
and firefighters stand near the collapsed portion of a highway overpass in Kolkata on
March 3. A huge portion of the overpass collapsed injuring three people. (Dibyangshu SARKAR/AFP/Getty Images)

02/21/2013

Pakistani girls shield themselves from the rain under an
umbrella as they walk back to their homes carrying sacks of vegetables and
fruits that they collected from the ground of a wholesale market, on the
outskirts of Islamabad, Pakistan, Feb. 21. (AP Photo/Muhammed
Muheisen)

02/20/2013

Striking
Indian auto-rickshaw drivers play carrom amid their vehicles at an auto stand
during a two-day strike called by trade unions opposing the current UPA
government's economic policies in Bhubaneswar on Feb. 20. Millions
of India's workers walked off their jobs on Wednesday in a nationwide
strike called by trade unions to protest the "anti-labour" policies of the
embattled government. (ASIT KUMARSTRDEL/AFP/Getty Images)

02/19/2013

An Indian Hindu
devotee prays in the Sangam or confluence of the Yamuna, Ganges and mythical
Saraswati rivers at the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad on Feb. 19. The Kumbh
Mela in the town of Allahabad will see up to 100 million worshippers gather over
55 days to take a ritual bath in the holy waters, believed to cleanse sins and
bestow blessings. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images)

02/14/2013

Indian school children hold posters and shout slogans
during the nationwide 'One Billion Rising India Campaign' in Hyderabad on Feb. 14. Indians were at the forefront of global protests on Thursday
in the One Billion Rising campaign for women's rights, galvanised by the recent
fatal gang rape that shocked the country. (Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images)

02/13/2013

An Indian wrestler poses while resting after an evening session at the Mahatma Phule Vyayam Mandir Kushti (traditional Indian
wrestling) academy in Mumbai on Feb. 13. Wrestlers around the world on
Wednesday vowed to fight to save the ancient sport's Olympic status, after the
International Olympic Committee voted to drop it for the 2020 Games. (Indranil Mukherjee /AFP/Getty Images)

02/12/2013

Demonstrators from the Rabha tribe
burn a tire as they block a road during a protest in at Dorapara in Goalpara
district in the northeastern Indian state of Assam on Feb. 12. (Reuters)

"Democracy is messy," former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once famously said.

But in the Indian state of Assam near the Bangladeshi border, where ethnic tensions have roiled for decades, it's more than messy: it's deadly.

According to reports at least eight and as many as 12 people were gunned down today in clashes between police and members of the Rabha tribe determined to block local elections. The tribe feels the election of a local council will only undermine the authority of its tribal leaders.

While the current clashes are isolated, the constant fear in India whenever such clashes occur is that they will spread.

Indian media said "a mob of 400 men and women" armed with axes, iron rods and machetes attacked a polling station in one school, while others torched ballot papers, ballot boxes and voting stations.

But in one poll in the village of Rakkhaysin, voters had the upper hand - first thwarting protestors trying to petrol-bomb the poll, then handing them a solid beating.

The army has been called in to calm the region, but the show of force could trigger more violence.

The border area has long been the site of heightened ethnic tensions between indigenous tribes and Bangladeshi-speaking Muslim people who were brought in by the British as early as the 19th century to improve agricultural production. Assam is known for its tea.

But the indigenous people say that increasing numbers of poor Bangladeshis - they call them "infiltrators" - routinely cross the border into India to compete for jobs, land and political power. In fact, the All India United Democratic Front, which aims to protect migrant rights, became the official opposition in the state legislature in 2011. It's led by Maulana Badruddin Ajmal Qasmi who is listed as one of the world's most influential Muslims.

Unrest in Assam has claimed more than 10,000 lives in the past two decades.

Bill Schiller has held bureau postings for the Toronto Star in Johannesburg, Berlin, London and Beijing. He is a NNA and Amnesty International Award winner, and a Harvard Nieman Fellow from the class of '06. Follow him on Twitter @wschiller

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